On Mar 24, 2009, at 8:49 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This is quintessential "shifting", Michael, shell-game debate tactics. (It is useful and reasonable to reserve the word 'cause' for an event. Static objects almost never conform to our notion of a 'cause',
What object in this universe is static?
so to keep our notions consistent we should not label a bullet as the cause of death -- though it's a sure thing lots of people will continue to do so.)
Now, I was not trained in philosophy, as others were, but I thought some schemes described four causes, material, efficient, first, and end--which I found to be a quite plausible and serviceable description. Which cause of death is the bullet in your example? Seems to me like the efficient cause. Or at least part of the efficient cause. (Or as it's called in the law, the proximate cause, "an act from which an injury results as a natural, direct, uninterrupted consequence and without which the injury would not have occurred.")
That parenthetically said, let's say Jake "causes" the rock to start rolling down the mountain to the valley by pushing it. What, according to you, is the "completion" of that cause? The arrival of the rock in the valley? "It" (what? The push? The rock?) "needs" what -- to reach the valley? Bad luck: The rock bumps into a bigger rock just fifty feet down the slope and it comes to a dead halt. But wait -- what happened to the "inevitability", the "inexorability", of the "result"?
To a layman, the "cause" (in quotation marks) is Jake's action to start the rock's rolling. And to a layman, the "completion" might seem to be for the rock to wind up in the valley. That's to a layman with a fuzzy notion of what is going on. More precisely according to your story, Jake positions the rock in such a way that the rock's center of gravity moves outside its (the COG's) support, and it become unstable. The instability is increased by the slope of the land, making it difficult for the rock's center of gravity, now moving with lateral momentum, to stop at a point of equilibrium above a point of support. Gravity then draws the rock closer to the center of the earth, and by falling lower, the rock converts the potential energy (of its higher elevation) into kinetic energy of continuing motion. Eventually, the rock stops when it reaches a support that has enough mass to resist the kinetic energy of falling and the attractive force of gravity. That could be the big rock just fifty feet down the hill (which might confuse a layman). In other words, the rock "needed" to be lower because of the interactions of natural forces, and then it "needed" to be at rest (relative to the other objects on the hill) when it reached the other rock that blocked its path down the hill. None of this touches on how things come into being. Rain "needs" to exist because of meteorological interactions, and rain needs to exist on your windshield because falling is part of what happens when rain is formed in the sky, and it strikes your car when it is below the cloud.
Do you feel an accumulating gas of absurdity here? It's not mine, Michael, it's yours. And here's where the shell game comes in: You say, Oh, well, the "completion" of the cause was not the arrival in the valley but the starting to roll. Or the bumping into the bigger rock. Whaever happens is inevitable -- and "needed". Oy.
Don't make me into the straw man in your little scene. Don't give me lines to say, which you can then rebut. Oy, indeed. Boris brought up the notion of a thing needed, and you added the Heidegger quotation, "What exist must be needed." It's possible to construe this, as I did, in terms of causation and result. You, in the same message, changed the terms from a rather general and abstract statement to a contemplation of personal things, food to eat, toys, photos, things "desired but not needed." You (responding to William's message) emphasized desire and need, human feelings and behaviors. Again, you introduced Heidegger's comment into this discussion.
Michael, don't fuss with words like 'cause', 'result', 'need', 'inevitable', et al while you have primitive, not-thought-out and deeply "fuzzy" notions behind them.
Get off your high horse, will ya. Geez. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [email protected]
